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ID:
169732
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| Summary/Abstract |
How can governments build political support for carbon pricing? This question has challenged policy designers since the earliest programs imposing new prices on pollution, and remains a vital question today. This perspective offers insights on strategies for building greater political support for carbon pricing, based on previous experiences with long-running “auction and invest” programs in the U.S. and abroad, including the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), California's carbon pricing system, and the EU emissions trading system (ETS). Three key insights can be derived from those experiences. First: cap and trade with an auction of allowances is an important option for carbon pricing with distinctive advantages. Second, it is important to generate tangible public benefits from a carbon price that are distributed among citizens in a way that is broadly perceived as fair and addresses potential concerns about higher consumer costs for energy. Third, the most effective form of those public benefits should vary predictably across a few clearly defined categories according to local circumstances.
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| 2 |
ID:
097494
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| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper explores detailed public attitudes regarding the expanding range of biofuels technologies and policy options. Subjects from 34 in-depth focus groups in central Indiana were fairly knowledgeable about biofuels technologies, but uninformed about biofuels policies despite being from a state where biofuels are a salient political issue. A narrow majority was supportive of biofuels in general, but expressed greater enthusiasm about "second generation" biofuels. Subject beliefs about biofuels' economic and environmental impacts were most important in shaping these opinions, rather than concerns about energy independence or other issues. In terms of policy options, subjects were most supportive of an alternative fuels standard and least supportive of a fixed subsidy and a cap and trade policy. In contrast to arguments about technologies, participants primarily framed their attitudes toward policies in terms of fairness. Although discussion did not substantially change aggregate preferences for most policies, it did increase support significantly for at least one policy proposal-a variable subsidy for ethanol. It is particularly noteworthy that subjects generally did not support the most common biofuel technology-corn-based ethanol-or the most prominent biofuels policy option-the fixed subsidy-despite residing in a state hosting a strong corn industry and staunch political advocates for both positions.
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